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VMware co-founder quits for academia

And then there were fewer

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After his wife was whacked as CEO by EMC padrino Joe Tucci, VMware co-founder Mendel Rosenblum has decided to retreat to the altogether cosier world of academia.

Rosenblum announced his resignation and return to Stanford University in an company-wide email on Monday night, The New York Times reports.

Rosenblum is married to Diane Greene, whose personality clash with Tucci ended in her sacking in July, much to the annoyance of investors. Tucci offered Greene's boardroom seat to her computer scientist husband, but he turned it down.

Rosenblum swiftly follows R&D chief Richard Sarwar, a Greene hire who last week decided to return to Oracle after just nine months in the job. Long-serving product development veep Paul Chan also quit in August.

This latest departure casts a further shadow over next week's VMworld conference in Las Vegas, where the firm will be seeking to regain momentum lost to ego-politics and Microsoft's big virtualisation push.

Newly-installed CEO Paul Maritz played down the exodus, decribing the firm as "in transition". Recent quarters have seen VMware fall short of Wall Street's big growth expectations.

There's a full rundown of VMware's post-Greene personnel travails here, by some lady called Ashlee Vance. ®